


a step sunward

by cephea



Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-01
Updated: 2019-08-01
Packaged: 2020-07-28 11:57:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20063644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cephea/pseuds/cephea
Summary: sometimes all you really need in a life is a full day off and really good distraction(kiba and shino babysit mirai for the day, and everyone else gets caught in the aftermath. canon-compliant. third person pov.)





	a step sunward

**Author's Note:**

> for kiro-sveta over on tumblr, my recipient for the shinobi summerfest exchange 2019!
> 
> i had a hard time deciding how i was going to go about mixing and matching the prompts i got, but i ended up really liking the direction and shape it took on! but i know a fic like this can feel a little over indulgent, so if it's just really not your thing, let me know and i'll take another shot at it
> 
> hope you had a great exchange and you have an amazing rest of your summer!

\- - - - - - -

“Ah! Careful, careful!” Kakashi warns, desperately bolting toward where Mirai is pulling at Biscuit’s ears without repent.

“He’s got somebody’s ears!!”

And unfortunately, it’s not that Kakashi doesn’t understand where she’s managed to get that idea from; Biscuit’s oddball colouring has always been what’s subjected him to light-hearted torment from the rest of the pack over the years. He’d just radically underestimated the kind of force a small child could exert on his patience. Before he can think to redirect her, she’s flitting over to Akino and getting fingerprints all over his glasses.

“Shino!! Look, look, matchy-matchy!”

“Indeed,” Shino says, gently removing them from her grip and wiping the smudges clear before returning them.

“You pick your fave yet?” Kiba asks, and Kakashi dearly hopes an appropriate amount of gratitude shows on his face for this gracious diversion.

Mirai stops dead in her tracks, eyes wide and hands frozen mid-grab at Uhei’s bandages. She’d forgotten. Hours of being willingly subjected to her torment, the whole pack playing at patience in the name of socializing Kurenai’s puppy, Kakashi being called out before he’s seen the friendly face of noon just so that Mirai could hold a “dog contest,” and she’d completely forgotten.

Kakashi feels so terribly and inexplicably aged by the weight of this realization.

“Um.”

“Not yet?”

Mirai gestures for Kiba’s ear in response, looking guilty and pitying at Kakashi’s lineup.

“I don’t want them to cry,” she whispers, but she hasn’t quite got the hang of it yet, and everyone hears her loud and clear. Kiba is making a valiant attempt not to laugh.

“Akamaru really is the best, huh?” Kiba says back, actively not whispering. Mirai nods her head, glancing back across her shoulder at them shyly.

“Would you like some assistance?” Shino asks, and Kakashi wants to plead in her stead, “I believe I have an amenable solution to your distress.”

Kakashi’s not convinced Mirai actually understands half of what Shino is saying, but he waits on bated breath for salvation when she reaches for Shino’s hand hopefully. He holds it delicately, seemingly unconcerned with the grim remains of lunch’s honey and graham crackers.

“A drumroll, if you would,” he says, nodding at Kiba. Kiba grins with an admirable amount of wolfish cheer, immediately drumming up sound against Akamaru’s ribcage. Akamaru contributes a happy howl, and a swarm of Shino’s bugs begins to pool in clouds over Kakashi’s line-up. Their buzzing is louder than the Inuzuka anticipation, but the atmosphere of it seems to have Mirai on edge, eyes full of a terrifying wonder.

“Ta-da,” Shino says tonelessly, and the bugs resolve into fuzzy 1st place rankings for everyone. Mirai cheers at a decibel that Kakashi knows pains everyone in her presence, hands clapping at a hummingbird’s pace.

“You ready to pick out flowers for Hinata?” Kiba asks, and Kakashi is so relieved he wants to cheer, too.

Mirai looks to the pack reluctantly, and Kakashi hears Pakkun sigh straight down to his gut before taking one for the team.

“It was an honour and a pleasure to have met your acquaintance,” Pakkun offers in his most placating team leader voice, and Mirai’s focus immediately shifts to patting his head hard enough that it rattles Kakashi’s brain cage.

“Paw!!”

Pakkun dutifully and solemnly offers up his paw, and Mirai mercilessly squishes the pads of his feet. In this, at least, Kakashi admits that letting them meet was for the better.

When things are all well and truly settled, and Mirai is off to leech the life out of someone else’s day, Kakashi finally lets himself relax, falling backward into the grass, eyes closed to the unforgiving summer sun. His dogs all follow, bowling into his sides, sitting on his arm, licking at his face.

“Yes, yes, okay! I’ve got it, I’ve got it,” he says, trying to keep the saliva from sliding up his nose, “I’ll get you a nice dinner, alright? Let’s just-“

“Nap,” Pakkun confirms, “we’ve earned… A nap.”

\- - - - - - -

The chime at the door to the flower shop is familiar enough that Ino pays it no mind.

“Just _ one _ moment, okay?” she says over her shoulder. Kiba had called her earlier to make sure it was okay to bring Mirai to the shop, but she wouldn’t have needed either the warning or a decade and a half of war training to hear the snickering glee of a child sneaking up behind her so obviously. 

She allows herself to be caught.

“Boo!!” Mirai shrieks, clutching at Ino’s skirt and smashing a sticky face against her leg. She very carefully sets her florist shears against the back edge of the table before reaching back to run a hand through Mirai’s curls.

“Oh no!! I’m caught! Help! Help! Won’t somebody come rescue me?”

“No. Why, you might ask? For we are all powerless in the face of terror,” Shino says, and Ino barely hears him over the sound of Kiba’s rough-edged laughter. She picks Mirai up underneath the armpits and tosses her into the air, only to get rewarded with louder shrieking. Once she’s been caught, Ino shifts to rest Mirai’s weight on her hip, and the added height brings her close enough for eye contact.

“What brings a villain like you all the way out to a nice place like this?” Ino asks, trying her best not to break character when Mirai’s eyes shine with excitement.

“Flowers!!” Mirai cheers, throwing her tubby four year-old arms into the air.

“Oh, well, I see! A thief and a criminal has come to rob me!”

“I gotta,” Mirai says sagely, voice dropped to a whisper, “need them for dinner!”

“No hard feelings, then, huh?”

“No hard feelings,” Kiba says, winking at the two of them. Mirai throws her arms around Ino’s neck, nuzzling into her, and it’s only half a second too slow to pass off as unrehearsed.

“No hard feelings,” Mirai repeats, voice somber even when stilted by her obvious lack of understanding of what the phrase means.

“We have given our consent to be subject to Hinata’s latest domestic experimentation, and feel it unwise to arrive without a peace offering,” Shino says, gently guiding Akamaru’s nose from the display of lilies they all know he’s allergic to. Ino grimaces, and Mirai responds by beginning to pap her face.

“Hinata’s not still craving that nauseating pepper pudding, is she?”

Kiba scratches the back of his neck and refuses to meet Ino’s eyes.

“Those _ are _ high-stakes, aren’t they,” she murmurs, and settles Mirai back down on the ground before taking her hand, “why don’t you show me what colours you like best?”

If Mirai were a regular customer, Ino would make a big show out of the centerpiece for the bouquet, would let herself get meticulous with the crafting and impact. She takes pride in her ability to nurture any bloom into the most beautiful, and it’s a skill she’s developed only through years of effort, failure, and observation. The art born from it has become one of the most comfortable ways she knows how to communicate.

But Mirai is not a regular customer. More than her pride and her skill and her talent, Ino wants to showcase the utter joy Mirai carries with her as she makes grabby hands at peonies and violets, Kiba’s hand at her back to prevent her from stumbling into the ceramic pots that litter the storefront.

“Kiba! Kiba!”

“What’s up, little girlie?”

Mirai is tugging at his sleeve and pointing into the cold storage case. Ino realizes before Kiba what she wants, and yes, of course, what else could she possibly have wanted? With a great amount of put-upon, victorious cheer, Ino hip-checks Kiba to the side and pulls down three brilliantly gold sunflowers.

“Is _ this _ what you meant to steal from me?” Ino asks, exaggeratedly tying a glittery ribbon around the stems as Mirai bounces near the counter.

“Flowers!!”

“An exceedingly excellent choice. Exquisite and exacting taste,” Shino says, but Ino shakes her head at him when he reaches for his wallet.

“I’m being robbed, remember?” Ino says back, winking.

Kiba is laughing again, lifting Mirai up onto Akamaru and passing her the sunflowers, winking back all the while. If Ino weren’t a sensor, she might not have noticed the trail of tiny chakra blips that light the path at Akamaru’s feet, but as it were, she watches the three of them pass out into the sunset-dyed streets, feeling for all the world like the sun still shines on her cheeks.

\- - - - - - -

Hinata has just finished laying out a new sweet egg curry when she hears Akamaru pawing at the front door. Kiba and Shino are only a corner street away when she checks, though activating the Byakugan while pregnant makes her feel light-headed.

“Come in!”

There’s a faint sound of doorknob rattling and then the all-telling thud of Akamaru banging his head on the door. The door’s locked. Shit. She could have sworn she’d left it unlocked when she’d come back in from grocery shopping, but-

Akamaru whines at her.

“Sorry, sorry!” Hinata says, hurriedly wiping her hands off against the dish rag in the kitchen and rushing to the door.

Without warning, a trio of sunflowers is smashed against her face.

“Present!!” Mirai cheers, and as punishment for Hinata’s negligence, Akamaru keeps cheering too.

“Why, thank you, my dear!”

The flowers are whisked away into a crystal vase, the kind Hinata knows is too expensive to justify having when she doesn’t live in the Hyuuga compound any longer, but that catches the last soft shattering of light through the patio to make petals across the table. Kiba and Shino are taking off their shoes at the entrance right as Hinata manages to get Mirai properly settled down into her booster seat.

“Smells great!” Kiba says, at the same time Shino says that it smells edible. She ignores it. She’ll be dead in her grave and people will still be ridiculing her pregnancy cravings. In all honesty, she’s become increasingly concerned about the kind of food her child is going to grow up wanting.

“It’s my grandmother’s recipe,” she says sarcastically, even though they all know her grandmother never cooked a day in her life, and smiles over her shoulder at the way Akamaru is fighting Kiba for the last chair.

“Does that mean we can expect it to fall within the range of acceptability for the human palate?” Shino asks, and he’s damn lucky she knows him well enough to know he’s just teasing.

“No promises! Word on the street has it that she may or may not have been an alien.”

Kiba snorts mid-serve, which Hinata will call a victory when Mirai doesn’t need any more food on her plate. He passes the serving dish to Shino, and Hinata smooths her skirt forward to sit down. The weight off her feet is an immediate relief, and it must show on her face, because Shino raises an eyebrow in her direction.

“I’m fine, really, just a bit tired.”

“Rest is good for you, you know,” Kiba adds, smooshing his curry and rice together like the animal he is. Hinata’s nose crinkles involuntarily.

“I do rest! But if I have nothing to do all day, I think I’ll lose my mind.”

“Do you need any assistance with your daily activities?”

“I’m okay, but thank you, Shino! I’m content to practice cooking.”

“We’re calling that pudding practice?” Kiba asks, giving her another look she chooses to ignore, and she focuses on helping Mirai’s spoon make it to her mouth. It is an attempt without success.

“Hinata’s turn!” Mirai says, and before Hinata can wonder what her turn is for, a spoon full of curry collides with her cheek. She tries to close her eyes and count back from five, but Kiba cracks up laughing before she makes it.

“Oh, shush!”

Shino hands her his napkin wordlessly.

“Kiba’s turn!” Mirai calls out, but now that the jig is up, he knows to open wide before he gets souped. For as much as it makes it into his mouth, there’s a lot more that makes it to the floor. Oh well, she thinks, floor mess is Naruto’s problem. She can’t bend that far forward.

Shino is gently scritching behind Akamaru’s ears while Kiba and Mirai laugh excitedly over a particularly big piece of egg they’ve found in her bowl. The white noise of the streets is beginning to die down, but enough of the life of the village trickles in to fill the room with with a sense of fullness. Whether it’s the vibrant colour or how easily distracted Hinata’s become in her pregnancy, her eyes are drawn back to the sunflowers. The more content she feels surrounded by people she loves, the more radiant they appear, as if the refracted amber glow pooling around them is a gift from the sun herself.

She and Naruto have long since decided on Bolt for a boy, in deference to Neji, safe from Hyuuga scrutiny under Minato’s impossibly large reputation, but, maybe, for a girl…

\- - - - - - -

The sun has well and truly set by the time Kiba and Shino have returned Mirai to Kurenai, hobbling back home through dusky side-streets heavy with the smell night air only ever takes on in the summer. To Shino, the smell is barely noticeable, completely meaningless, without any purpose at all in his life. To Kiba, though, it’s something worth savouring, and Shino has long since learned how to maximize and prioritize this happiness for the people he loves. They take the long way back.

“Hooo, well, that was fun!” Kiba says, exhaling his exhaustion and turning to hit Shino with a shit-eating grin, “you enjoy yourself?”

“While it is always… an endeavor… to take care of Mirai, I cherish both the opportunity and the meaning behind it being presented to me.”

“No need to get sappy about it, man. You should know by now we all trust you.”

Shino nods, half in acknowledgment of Kiba’s voice, careful to remember this compromise in conversation, and half in thought. He _ should _know, but there is a particular emotional experience to being told so directly that he doesn’t know how to put to words.

“I would trust you with my hive, were they able to be separated from my body.”

Akamaru barks, nose bumping into Shino’s palm. The laugh he gets from Kiba feels a little like he's barking, too, free-spirited the way he gets most earnestly when he’s tired.

“Akamaru trusts you, too,” Kiba says, easy in a way Shino has always admired. It’s only because he’s admired that tone for so long that he hears the forlorn edge caught at the back of it.

“Is something the matter?”

“Hm?”

Kiba and Akamaru bump into each other gently whenever they walk, in a way that always looks like they’re drawn together just for touch. Shino waits for Kiba to look up from absentmindedly stroking Akamaru’s forehead.

“You don’t seem entirely yourself.”

“I’m good, I’m just…”

“Just?”

“It makes me a little nervous, you know? All this shit happens so fast, and I shouldn’t worry about it so much, but I can’t…”

Kiba’s still got one hand on Akamaru when he stops on the sidewalk. The streetlights have come on, but the sky still carries brightness late into the evening this time of year, and it only makes the pair of them look sallow. Shino doubles back as Kiba chews his lip in thought, and takes his free hand, letting his skin vibrate for familiarity.

Kiba looks a little startled at first, but the tension seems to seep from his skin with the buzz, and he starts walking. Though Shino doesn’t understand why the feel of skin brings comfort to others, the bump of their shoulders, being lulled into their pace and stride, the rhythmic way they all sync to one thrum together as they move forward, feels soothing.

“You still worry for the war,” Shino finishes, when there’s room to breathe.

“… Yeah.”

“It has ended.”

“I’m aware, smartass!” Kiba bites, but there’s no heat to it, and it feels like Shino’s hand is held more firmly.

“… Would you write me a recommendation?”

“Hah?!”

“Administratively-“

“I knew what you meant, Shino, don’t get all obtuse on me. I mean, what the fuck do you think you need one for? Even if I pretend I’ll acknowledge you as team leader, about the only things you’d need a subordinate rec for are the hospital and…”

“The academy,” Shino confirms, trying to gauge Kiba’s reaction.

“… You’d be shit at it.”

“Correct.”

“That’s all you’re gonna give me, huh?”

Shino can often feel the entire village pulse the way his body does, like the village has its own heart, and its citizens stream about frantically, happily, hopefully. There are more people living in the village than he would have expected, even with the understanding that many are refugees. All of Konohagakure’s citizens, for better or for worse, call Konoha home.

“Hinata is already pregnant,” Shino says, thinking more of the way her skin glows, now, than the images he remembers of her covered in blood just a handful of years ago.

“Right,” Kiba says, and it comes off dismissive, but it’s often the way Kiba gets when he’s thoughtful.

“That is a reality that she will not change. It follows, then-“

“That we oughta be thinking about what kind of place these kids are gonna grow up in, huh?” Kiba smiles at him, then, the full-bodied, open kind that always reaches down to bone marrow. “Yeah, fine, whatever. I’ll write you a fucking academy recommendation.”

“It is much appreciated.”

“Figures you’d grow up and still wanna play at Mr. Damage Control.”

“A bold attack from one who has never relinquished the desire to protect everyone.”

The temperature drops as the evening breeze begins to spin by, and Shino’s bugs writhe with a boredom and curiosity he wants to encourage. They fly about in aimlessly before settling across Akamaru’s back and Kiba’s shoulders; an over-excitable bug makes Akamaru sneeze. It’s a rare and tranquil moment to feel the world hang in such wonderful equilibrium, and Shino pretends not to notice when they walk right past the Inuzuka compound, and take the longer way home.

\- - - - - - -


End file.
